|
But if Matter is devoid of quality how can it be evil?
It is described as being devoid of quality in the sense only that
it does not essentially possess any of the qualities which it
admits and which enter into it as into a substratum. No one says
that it has no nature; and if it has any nature at all, why may
not that nature be evil though not in the sense of quality?
Quality qualifies something not itself: it is therefore an
accidental; it resides in some other object. Matter does not
exist in some other object but is the substratum in which the
accidental resides. Matter, then, is said to be devoid of Quality
in that it does not in itself possess this thing which is by
nature an accidental. If, moreover, Quality itself be devoid of
Quality, how can Matter, which is the unqualified, be said to
have it?
Thus, it is quite correct to say at once that Matter is without
Quality and that it is evil: it is Evil not in the sense of
having Quality but, precisely, in not having it; give it Quality
and in its very Evil it would almost be a Form, whereas in Truth
it is a Kind contrary to Form.
"But," it may be said, "the Kind opposed to all Form is Privation
or Negation, and this necessarily refers to something other than
itself, it is no Substantial-Existence: therefore if Evil is
Privation or Negation it must be lodged in some Negation of Form:
there will be no Self-Existent Evil."
This objection may be answered by applying the principle to the
case of Evil in the Soul; the Evil, the Vice, will be a Negation
and not anything having a separate existence; we come to the
doctrine which denies Matter or, admitting it, denies its Evil;
we need not seek elsewhere; we may at once place Evil in the
Soul, recognising it as the mere absence of Good. But if the
negation is the negation of something that ought to become
present, if it is a denial of the Good by the Soul, then the Soul
produces vice within itself by the operation of its own Nature,
and is devoid of good and, therefore, Soul though it be, devoid
of life: the Soul, if it has no life, is soulless; the Soul is no
Soul.
No; the Soul has life by its own nature and therefore does not,
of its own nature, contain this negation of The Good: it has much
good in it; it carries a happy trace of the
Intellectual-Principle and is not essentially evil: neither is it
primally evil nor is that Primal Evil present in it even as an
accidental, for the Soul is not wholly apart from the Good.
Perhaps Vice and Evil as in the Soul should be described not as
an entire, but as a partial, negation of good.
But if this were so, part of the Soul must possess The Good, part
be without it; the Soul will have a mingled nature and the Evil
within it will not be unblended: we have not yet lighted on the
Primal, Unmingled Evil. The Soul would possess the Good as its
Essence, the Evil as an Accidental.
Perhaps Evil is merely an impediment to the Soul like something
affecting the eye and so hindering sight.
But such an evil in the eyes is no more than an occasion of evil,
the Absolute Evil is something quite different. If then Vice is
an impediment to the Soul, Vice is an occasion of evil but not
Evil-Absolute. Virtue is not the Absolute Good, but a co-operator
with it; and if Virtue is not the Absolute Good neither is Vice
the Absolute Evil. Virtue is not the Absolute Beauty or the
Absolute Good; neither, therefore, is Vice the Essential Ugliness
or the Essential Evil.
We teach that Virtue is not the Absolute Good and Beauty, because
we know that These are earlier than Virtue and transcend it, and
that it is good and beautiful by some participation in them. Now
as, going upward from virtue, we come to the Beautiful and to the
Good, so, going downward from Vice, we reach Essential Evil: from
Vice as the starting-point we come to vision of Evil, as far as
such vision is possible, and we become evil to the extent of our
participation in it. We are become dwellers in the Place of
Unlikeness, where, fallen from all our resemblance to the Divine,
we lie in gloom and mud: for if the Soul abandons itself
unreservedly to the extreme of viciousness, it is no longer a
vicious Soul merely, for mere vice is still human, still carries
some trace of good: it has taken to itself another nature, the
Evil, and as far as Soul can die it is dead. And the death of
Soul is twofold: while still sunk in body to lie down in Matter
and drench itself with it; when it has left the body, to lie in
the other world until, somehow, it stirs again and lifts its
sight from the mud: and this is our "going down to Hades and
slumbering there."
|
|